Billy Sharp signs for Sheffield United | Calendar

Sharp, 29, who had a year left to run on his contract at Leeds, has joined for an undisclosed fee on a two-year deal with the option of another 12 months and returns to Bramall Lane for a third spell at his hometown club.

Sharp will now put his mind to helping Sheffield United win promotion in the forthcoming campaign, while Adkins will be counting on the striker to fire in goals regularly for the Blades.

Adkins has been attempting to bolster his frontline since taking over and the protracted move for Sharp seemed likely with the pair having worked together at Scunthorpe United, Southampton and Reading.

He links up with a manager he has played under before in Nigel Adkins and has wasted little time in expressing his delight at the switch. “Billy is someone I know well”.

Understandably, Sheffield United fans are ecstatic at the signing of Billy Sharp – many of them seeing it as something of a coup bringing the self-confessed “Fat Lad from Sheffield” back to his own terra madre – the place where he belongs.

Sammon, who has nine caps for the Republic of Ireland, arrived in the UK when he signed for Kilmarnock in August 2008. From there he went to Wigan and then Derby County but found himself down the pecking order and had loan spells at Ipswich and at the New York Stadium last season.